Get traffic for your website - episode 1 - get more traffic from Google

Welcome to episode one in my series of articles on how to get traffic for your website. In this episode we'll be looking at the biggest traffic source for this site - Google.

Google deserves your attention as a traffic source because they control the search engine market. SEO analysts claim this figure is as low as 60% while I calculate it to be somewhere near 95% for my demographic. It's the single biggest source of traffic for Seopher.com and therefore I recommend you spend the time to accomodate Google as much as possible.

Google delivered 30,000 more visitors than ANY other source last year
Google is my biggest bringer of traffic over the past 12 months, delivering a reported 107,228 visitors to the site and constituting 25.85% of my traffic. Where possible you should do everything you can to help Google recognise your content; fortunately there's plenty you can do to ensure good standing with Google.

#1 - Submit a sitemap
If you submit a sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools then that informs them of what pages you have on the website. This is good because Google relies on the Googlebot to spider your pages and return all ones it finds - sometimes it can find it difficult to find all your content. If you submit a sitemap to them (or link them to one that updates dynamically - there are Wordpress plugins for this) then the Googlebot will know what pages it's looking for and index them more efficiently.

#2 - Have a sitemap page on your website
It doesn't have to be called sitemap - but having a page on your site that lists every piece of content you have with a link will help the spiders find your pages naturally. The last thing you want is for Google to ignore any of your posts.

#3 - Mark up your content/website properly
This is the very first step in SEO'ing your website for search engines (not just Google). You need to ensure you have the title of the content in the "title" tag of the page, with the appropriate use of XHTML markup to back this up. Rather than get into the specifics of it, read my series of articles on how to SEO your website. If you mark up your content properly then your content should appear more relevant in search results - thus resulting in more visitors.

#4 - Understand what keywords to target
To improve your traffic from Google it's best to think about what keywords you want people to find you using. This may seem obvious but remember that the most popular keywords are also very competitive and you're unlikely to score highly for them. Instead think about synonyms that are less popular but that you could viably rank higher for - this will offer the best long term gains. In my personal experience the most obscure titles perform the best in the long run. For a more detailed understanding read my post about understanding keyword density and how to research your keyphrases.

#5 - Don't upset them!
This is more true today than it ever was before. If you upset Google through questionable practices (gaming the system) then they can (and will) remove you from their index. This would remove all instances of your website from the search results - this would be bad. If I lost Google as a traffic source then my daily visits would be down 40-50% and that's unacceptable. So avoid questionable practices when dealing with Google because they have the power make your blogging journey SO much more difficult.

#6 - Deeplink
You shouldn't need to do this because Google does index sites quite thoroughly but if you're running on a brand new domain it can't hurt to submit a URL to Google manually. Although it's worth remembering that new domains tend to get placed in the Google sandbox and will need to "serve their time" before being released upon the world.

#7 - Update on a regular basis
Google (like the other search engines) favour content that is new (therefore deemed more relevant) so if you update the website infrequently then you can expect to see fluxuations in your Google traffic. Writing new content on a regular basis ensures that they index your website on a regular basis (Seopher.com has new posts indexed within hours of posting). This means that my content is receiving search results the same day it is posted, rather than waiting weeks.

#8 - Interact with other websites, leaving links back to your own
This may sound slightly odd but a good tactic for getting Google to look at your domain is to get links on other sites (especially within the niche). So if you interact with other bloggers (leaving comments, guest posting etc) then when their domain is spidered it can follow the link back to your site (unless they use rel="nofollow"). Darren Rowse from Problogger said this was the most logical answer to how you get your site indexed on Google.

#9 - Accessibility
Because I'm a web developer I weigh accessibility quite high; SEO is just a bi-product a lot of the time. If you ensure that your website isn't relient on specific technologies (such as Javascript, Flash etc) to find your way from page to page then it means that non-visual browsers can find your content easier. This is good for two reasons: 1) it means visually impaired users can still make use of your information and 2) spiders can also find your information. Spiders aren't visual browsers. If your website needs specific technologies for navigation purposes - make sure it degrades so that other browsers (and the Googlebot) can still get around.

I really wish I had a 10th point to make but I can't think of one... Anyway, these 9 tips are more than enough to ensure that you maximise Google as a traffic source. Don't neglect Google Images either - that can bring in new visitors too. Just remember, Google is the biggest traffic source (for me anyway) and while it doesn't have the excitement of surges of visitors from Digg it's more sustainable; don't neglect it.

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